


Fleeting Lies the Path

by retroflex



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Birdwatching, Character Study, Gen, Marianne's Birthday Celebration, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27659060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/retroflex/pseuds/retroflex
Summary: The birds go to the forest to hide. Sometimes, Marianne does too.Marianne's Birthday Celebration Day 1: Animals/Smile
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Marianne Birthday 2020





	Fleeting Lies the Path

Sometimes, it’s the memories that hurt the most.

Within her mind’s eye, the countryside is somehow both hazy and unforgettable at the same time. It presents itself in the way that earliest childhood memories typically do; certainly real, but incomplete, only the briefest picture of a still, soundless moment, and Marianne can never quite be sure of what exactly was forgotten over the years and wrongly filled in later. The fields stretch beyond her sight, boundless except for where they meet the trees, and she can remember herself running free, tactless, chasing butterflies through the knee-high grass.

The colors are correct. Of this, she is certain. There is a hill of bright green clovers punctuated by dainty yellow buttercups, and billowing clouds can be seen forever across an otherwise clear sky, rolling, fat, and drunk on leftover rain. Marianne is the liminal age before childhood proper, old enough to splash through the mud puddles by herself, yet young enough to be carried home when such adventuring tires her out. This time, her mother takes her up in her arms. Marianne clings to a shoulder and plays with a fistful of blue hair, and is halfway to dreaming when her mother jostles her awake and points upward, high into the branches.

“Marianne, look,” she whispers. “Up, up! A hawfinch!”

“Haw-finch,” Marianne repeats, and then her face lights up as she spots it. The bird is all sleek feathers standing proud on a branch, more alive than she ever could have imagined, and its head darts around for a second before it chooses to flit away, and Marianne claps her hands in delight.

And so it goes. Every time they venture out on another picnic there is something new to learn. Her mother names the endless birds by their endless shapes and colors, and her father will chime in with their migratory patterns, their nesting behavior, what kinds of things they might eat—he roots around in the dirt with his fingers, pretending to search for bugs, and Marianne squeals, pretending to be grossed out. Sometimes, there is no bird at all, but her mother can still point in the direction of song, and soon Marianne is staying awake past bedtime, lying flat under her blankets, cataloging the clicking of eagles and the cawing of jays as they soar outside her window. She spins in circles and dizzies herself trying to chase the echoing hoot of an owl, and runs short of breath trying to imitate the two-note whistle of a chickadee. A stray feather is picked from the ground, passed from parent to parent, identified as hazel grouse, and then washed clean of dirt before Marianne is finally allowed to run to her room with it and press it between the pages of a book for safekeeping.

Marianne thinks that maybe, just maybe, that if she were able to go back to Edmund, gather two weeks’ worth of supplies, retrace her steps through the forest, denote her location on the map ten times a day, and have the miraculous luck to avoid attracting any demonic beasts or Crest scholars in the process, then _maybe_ she would stand a chance of finding her childhood home. Maybe. And all the doorframes and furniture might seem so small since she’d grown, but she would still remember exactly which pages of which book on which dusty, child-sized bookshelf held the feather she’d come for, and with some providence it would still be there, still tucked away in its hiding place, still waiting for her safe return.

Maybe.

Assuming the manor hasn’t already been burnt to the ground.

Sometimes, she thinks it would be easier to forget.

***

A muted drumming noise floats down from somewhere over the stables, and neither Leonie nor Ingrid seem to notice. Marianne glances around for confirmation—the noise comes again, and yes, it’s definitely drifting in from the outside, through the open door, which is itself too far from any trees that could possibly be hosting any woodpeckers. Strange. To Dorte, she whispers, “Do you hear that?” and he answers with an almost-imperceptible whinny. No one has ever taught him about birds, so Marianne lets it slide. Maybe she can teach him later.

Above them, the woodpecker drums again. Ingrid wipes sweat off her forehead with the back of a thumb and says something to Leonie, who laughs open-mouthed. With a shy farewell to Dorte and the quietest footfalls she can muster, Marianne tries to slip away without their noticing—and fails, as Ingrid catches her inching out the door and waves a friendly goodbye, and Marianne, face burning, forces herself to wave back.

“See you at dinner!” Leonie calls after her. Marianne exhales through her teeth and can’t bring herself to respond.

The other girls are far too kind, to spend their free day volunteering at the stables. A burden like her ought not to share in their chores.

A sack of dry oats is sitting upright in the corner of the courtyard outside. Glancing over her shoulder shouldn’t make her feel so guilty, especially not when she has so many other things to feel guilty about—she already sneaks the horses extra helpings all the time, but she would still rather not need to explain herself should anyone wander by and find her scooping greedy handfuls into the pouch tied at her hip. Feeding the stray dogs and cats is common among the students, although the more proper of her classmates would be pressed to admit it; and yet, Marianne always finds herself alone in her scattering of grains over the pathways. Today is no exception. Birds, as well as mice and rats, are where most people choose to draw their tolerance, for reasons that Marianne herself won’t entertain. The monks have already made their opinions known— _we have vermin, young miss_ , _your crumbs are falling through the floorboards_ , and Marianne’s face heats up again just thinking about it. She had only been eating in the library because the dining hall was far too crowded. It had never even occurred to her why such a thing would be against the rules.

Hence, the forest. If mice are chased from the Goddess’s house, then Marianne will simply go with them. She rarely sees them, but she knows they’re there, for a lunch hour spent staring across a grove will usually yield a sighting or two, of rustling through the underbrush, of tiny, pattering paws scurrying across stone, and the small piles of flax seed she leaves will be gone the next day—it’s something that Marianne can understand, and appreciate. The forest makes her feel safe too.

She ducks her head underneath a fence and is suddenly there. An encroaching mess of blackberry vines walls her off, bristling at the edge of the paddocks, constantly threatening to spill over, dense enough to smother her completely. She slips her body between the thorns—no, she reminds herself, they’re not _thorns_ , they’re _prickles_ ; her father taught her the difference, and she remembers it better than yesterday’s homework—she slips her body between the _prickles_ and lands in the slightly-less-dense clearing where she sometimes eats her lunch, and keeps going.

There can’t possibly be much daylight left, and she has no idea how long her search will last. The pouch at her hip is not very large and already a third empty, which worries her, in the way that many, many things tend to do.

Sometimes, even here, Marianne can’t shake the feeling of being an intruder. The forest simply doesn’t want her here. It cloaks itself in silence, oppressing itself around her with its dull, blending shades of dirt and moss, and she knows that it will not give up its secrets easily—how different this place is, from the verdant coastal forest that she knows! Even the roots seem hostile, determined to trip her to the ground, and every direction begins to look like north, and even the air itself seems to thin around her, because, that’s right, they’re sitting atop a mountain...

Then a warbler starts singing its familiar song somewhere nearby, and all at once, Marianne feels at home again.

Gratefully, she deposits an extra-large helping of grain for the warbler atop a fallen log. The seeds, nuts and oats that she brings are valued gifts, her treaty as an outsider. Even after so many months, she’s still more at ease communicating with a forest than with her own peers. They all appreciate nature in their own ways, but never in _her_ way—Leonie loves birds to an extent that ends on her dinner plate, in the same way that Ignatz favors sweeping landscapes over tiny details, or how Claude covets foxgloves only for their poison. Her classmates are all borne of their respective environments. Marianne cannot claim to be different.

It is then, wandering as an interloper, that she finds it.

The remains of an ancient tree stand wider than she is tall, diseased, already pecked full of holes, with chips of soft wood carpeting the ground around it. The rest of it stretches far into the forest, settled firmly into the dirt. Likely, it fell before she was even born, and, in the ensuing decades, the bugs have come to nest, and the woodpeckers after them. Marianne circles the tree stump in awe, observing, and finds a bulging root that she can stand on to boost herself—she takes her pouch in hand and upends it, scattering the small amount of her remaining seeds into loose pockets atop the uneven surface. Her pouch goes tied back around her waist, and she finds a nice tree, not too far away, that she can shelter under as she waits.

The smaller birds find it first. A flock of tiny goldcrests settle on the tree stump, in shades of brown leaning into yellow, and they mingle peacefully with a flock of gray bushtits; they’re soon joined by a pair of thrushes, hopping around on both legs, pecking at the grains, and a starling touches down from overhead, announcing its arrival with a looping screech. Marianne waits patiently, knowing that her gift should be enough for everyone to share. Finally, a black woodpecker swoops through the trees and latches onto the side of the stump. It’s probably not the same one from the stables, but they’re near enough that it might be a brother, or a cousin. Its red crown is vibrant, full and healthy, and it sings out once; a short, pitchy note, before jumping up to take its place among the rest of the birds.

Embedded into the heart of the forest, with no one around to see her, Marianne allows herself to smile.

***

She finds herself late for dinner. Hilda and Claude are already deep in discussion, but Hilda slides over on the wooden bench so effortlessly to let her in.

“...We didn’t get done until past sundown. _Ugh_ , it was so much _work_ ,” Hilda groans, then turns to Marianne nonchalantly, blinking at her innocently through long, fluttering eyelashes. “Whatever! Hey, what about you, Marianne? How was _your_ free day?”

“It was good. I saw a bird,” Marianne says amicably.

A two-sentence answer—double the usual amount. Claude raises an eyebrow. Without the slightest trace of mockery, Hilda asks, “What kind of bird?”

“A black woodpecker,” Marianne answers. “Um, maybe about three years old. His whole head was red, so, um, I know that he was a male.”

From across the table, Claude leans in a bit closer. “Sounds _invigorating_. How did you learn something like that?”

Marianne hesitates, but Hilda swats one of Claude’s hands away. “Because she’s not a moron like you, Claude! Can you quit trying to get into people’s heads?”

“Alright, alright,” he protests sheepishly, before the two of them quietly descend into bickering.

Marianne sits still, content to just listen.

For today, one smile was enough.


End file.
